Category Archives: Bookish Talk

Welcome to my first actual discussion post in a while 😀 I have to admit, coming up with discussion topics isn’t as easy when you’re currently not reading much, so this one is something I took from my list of post ideas I composed last year. Most of my ideas are no longer relevant, but a few surprisingly still are.

As you could guess from the title, today I’ll be talking about translated books and my relationship with them. I love it, hate it, can’t live without it, yet don’t wanna live with it anymore. Sounds confusing? I’ll explain soon 🙈 a little background : I live in Indonesia and my native language is Bahasa. I’ve learned English ever since I was a toddler, but I didn’t start reading books in English until I was a late teenager.

Disclaimer : in this post I’ll only be talking about books translated from English to your native language, not from foreign language to English.

When I first started reading, I read local books. And comics. I love them, but soon I was running out of things to read, so I started to branch out and read translated books. My first book was Harry Potter (surprised, surprised). I admit, I LOVED translated books. It opened so many doors for me. I mean, if I only read local books, I wouldn’t be the reader I am today.

A few years later, I started to get curious and I wanted to read English books in their original language. Funny thing was, there was this cheap books sales selling English books so I thought, this is perfect coincidence! But you know what I bought? I bought… Much Ado About Nothing by Shakespeare… Idk, Shakespeare was a big name and I thought I was gonna start big, but it was freakin classic! I didn’t even like reading classics in my own language, let alone in English one page in and I already leafed through my Oxford dictionary a few times.

Long story short, I gave up.

It was in 2013 when I eventually read an English book—from end to end. I was following Divergent series and when Allegiant came out, I was so impatient I couldn’t wait for the translated version to come out!! So I bought the original version and surprisingly, I enjoyed it. For sure I didn’t completely understand every words, but I understand enough to get by. It opened even more doors for me, because now I get to read more : books that the translation version haven’t come out and books that didn’t get translated, among others.

My English gets better and better each day and it becomes a habit for me to buy and read books in English. I befriend bloggers from all over the world who also read English on daily basis. It’s the new normal. Until I met people in real life who “mock” my choice.

I met a few coworkers who also love to read. We’d talk about books we both love and own and when they asked for recommendations, I gave them a few titles I love. When they asked to borrow the books, I told them my copies are in English and if they mind. Aaaaaand they started implying that I’m pretentious or above them by reading in English instead of the translated ones. And they talk about how English books are more expensive and why would I opt for them instead. The comments went on, but the most annoying part is when they resent me for buying books in English because then they can’t borrow the books.

I was like??? Excuse me but I buy books for MYSELF, not for you people who can’t even respect my choice.

So that’s where this post came from.

What I Love from Translated Books

Like I said, it opened SO MANY doors for me. I wouldn’t be able to read Harry Potter at such a young age if it wasn’t because of the translated version.

Translators are miracle workers!! Even if sometimes the translations aren’t perfect, I admire their works so, so much ♥

I get to read books in foreign language. Ruby Red trilogy by Kerstin Gier is one of my favorite series and it was in German. If it wasn’t translated to English, I wouldn’t have read it by now.

They’re indeed cheaper. You could buy the translated book for half the price of the original version.

What I Dislike from Translated Books

The jokes don’t get translated as well. You know how sometimes a joke is in idioms but in the translated version they translate it literally so you lose the point? That happens a lot. I first noticed it when I read Percy Jackson. I felt like the jokes were too stiff and frankly not funny, and when I looked at the original version, I found out why.

Sometimes the translated versions are too formal. In Bahasa (or maybe in other languages as well) different context require different speaking style. But a lot of times I found in translated books, the characters speak like they are writing reports—way, wayyy to formal, and highly unusual. I know that writing informally would look messy, but there’s that line between completely formal and completely informal. Local books usually find that balance, but translated books often don’t.

They take a long time to release. Sometimes I want to read books right on their release date and waiting for the translated version is agony. Although I admit, nowadays translated books get released a lot faster than it used to. Probably only a month or two later than the original version.

A lot of books I want to read don’t even get translated.

Well if you see the list above, you’d find four pros and four cons. So, it’s a tie, right? But still, for me the cons outweigh the pros so I’d still choose to read the original version in English 😛

That’s the end of my discussion! I must admit, I’m a little rusty after a long while not writing this kind of post 🙈 now LET’S TALK!! Do you have you own experience with translated books. Especially for international bloggers whose first language isn’t English out there, what made you decide to read books in English? Do you still read the translated version? Tell me! 😀

Welcome back to another post of me 😀 I’m sooo excited to be back here, but I’m still pretty out of ideas so today, I’m gonna be talking about my bookish life during hiatus. As you probably know, I just got back from a 1-year-and-2-months hiatus which also happened to be a period of long reading slump. But that doesn’t mean I completely cut off my relationship with books—that would be impossible because books are my life. So anyway, here’s a quick recap of what I’ve been up to in terms of books!

Books I read

This is a little hard to track because I stopped using goodreads for a while, but on top of my head here are some books I read during my hiatus :

If you see the pictures above, you’d find out that I mostly only read local books. It’s because they’re easier to find—I don’t have any international bookstore on my current city—and they’re frankly easier to digest. I mean, it’s my mother tongue so I can read faster 😛

RESIGN by Almira Bastari. A highly amusing NA romance comedy highlighting the relationship between an employee and her supervisor. Quick, comical, witty, and just what I need to read after a hectic day at work.

AROMA KARSA by Dee Lestari. Dee is my favorite Indonesian writer and I love her Supernova series so much. This one is a stand alone about two people with exceptional sense of smell and an ambitious women “exploiting” the gifts for her own purpose. It’s a little fantasy meet historical fiction meet contemporary but it worked so well. I’m really hoping for a sequel though.

AUTOBOYOGRAPHY by Christina Lauren. It centers on a m/m relationship between a student with supportive parents and his tutor, who happens to be a mormon. It’s set in a writing class where the students are asked to write a whole book by the end of the semester. There are a lot of things I love, but it was unfortunately a bit slow for me.

OBSIDIO by Amie Kaufman & Jay Kristoff. The book that got me out of reading slump. Intense, brutal, unpredictable. Not gonna say anything more because I’ve already written an 800 words review, just wait and see 😛

I’m quite sure I read more than ONLY 4 books this year but I just can’t remember anything more 🙈 I did read a little part of Warcross, When Dimple Met Rishi, and Strange the Dreamer but at the moment I couldn’t focus so I put them on hold for now.

Books I Bought

I might not read much lately but I still shopped for books every time I got the chance here are some of the books I bought so far.

Here are some of the others. No photo because they’re at my place and I’m currently at my parents’ house for Eid holiday.

When you’re not in the mood to read, then you’re simply not in the mood. Even if these shiny books keep waving at me. Of all the books I bought, I think Obsidio is the only one I finished. I thought for sure that it’s a contemporary book that would get me out of my slump because that’s what usually happens, but turned out I was wrong. I got completely immersed while reading Obsidio and I stayed up until 2 in the morning to finish the 615 pages book because it was just that great

Anyway, now that I thiiiink I’m finally in the mood to read again, I’m gonna go through all these books slowly. I’m thinking of starting Children of Blood and Bone, Leah and the Offbeat, and picking up Warcross and Strange the Dreamer where I left off before. What do you think? Are there any books from above that you think I should read first?

Books to Movie Adaptation

Surprisingly, I watched quite a lot of movies this past year. A lot more than I usually did. I remember watching several books to movie adaptation, but the only one I remember was Ready Player One🙈 it wasn’t the best story I’ve ever seen but it was enjoyable! I had so much fun watching the movie and it made me want to read the book—or read Warcross, because I’ve been told Warcross is a much, much better version.

Ohhh I also watched and read Susah Sinyal. Instead of book to movie, it’s a movie to book adaptation. The movie came out on December 2017, directed by my favorite Ernest Prakasa. It’s a family movie about the dynamic between a single mother and her daughter. It’s so heartwarming, so when I heard there would be a book and that my favorite author Ika Natassa will co-write it, I WAS DEFINITELY IN!! It didn’t disappoint because the book brings out much more feelings and depth into the story that the movie lacked of.

Oh well, that;s another book I read during my hiatus but I’m too lazy to go back up and edit, so 😛

Writing

I don’t know if you remember, but I do have a writing project I started at the beginning of last year. You can read it here. I know I made it my resolution to finish the first draft by the end of the year and I still haven’t BUT it’s not like I didn’t make any progress!! I’ve actually written the ending but there are still a lot of plot holes and I couldn’t figure out how to fill them. I also did make a lot of edits. And I, um…. actually started another project

I wrote around 5 chapters and haven’t picked it up anymore hahaha fingers crossed I’ll get back to it soon! ♥

Book Blogs I Read

It’s sad to say that I’ve completely failed at keeping up with book blogs I follow </3 since I announced my hiatus, I’ve probably only opened my wordpress reader a couple of times and my Bloglovin feed none at all. (Speaking of my country BLOCKED access to Bloglovin along with Tumblr what a lame government!!!). Sometimes I did click through the link to posts I found on Twitter, but I never stayed long enough to read until the end. But there is this blog I found through Twitter called Snark Squad—you could tell from the name that the blog basically only snarks at bad books. And boy it was so fun to read!!

I think I spent a month or two reading it every single day. There are a lot of funny ones, even of the books I enjoyed, but my favorites gotta be about Fifty Shades series. The series was SO BAD it’s ridiculous. They snark it chapter by chapter and it’s like I’m reliving the stories through their eyes. Except the snarks are way better and funnier than the original stories 😛

Well well well, I guess that’s all I can share about my life in terms of books. Do you think there are things I possibly missed? Hmm anywayyy, how’s your reading life so far? Ready any fantastic books lately? I’m in desperate need of recommendations! Oh, and are there any book blogs you’re loving lately? Please link me! I want to follow more bloggers 😀

Welcome to my pile of shame : my TBR. Even as I was typing the title, I already knew it was futile because which bookworm, in the history of ever, has successfully conquered their TBR? None, I assume. Doesn’t matter how fast we read, we’ll never get ahead of our TBR because our TBR is endless and always expanding 🙈

Today I will present you my physical TBR. This is clearly not counting the unread books on my kindle app. Let’s not go there, shall we? 😂😂 I’m gonna need your help to decide which book I need to read soon so if you see a favorite, tell me! ♣Continue reading →

I’m supposed to post a discussion every Saturday but several things happened, so I’m a day late 😂 last week I was so, so swamped with work and for once I didn’t have any discussion post drafted. I had to work half day on Saturday so I thought I was gonna whip up a quick post on the afternoon. The thing is, I got sick on Friday night and turned out… my biggest fear came true. I got chicken pox 😂😂😂 I never got it as kid so I always have that fear of eventually getting infected.

Yesterday I felt so bad and was high on fever I physically didn’t have the energy to even open my laptop, let alone wrote a post ahaha but today I felt stronger and better and I’m ready to get back into blogging! Anyway, I’m gonna have to stay home for a week so I’m gonna be around for a while, that is depending on my health, obviously 🙂

Anyway, today I’ll bring you something fun : how to make a bookworm happy! ♥ I hope we could all relate and if there’s a non bookworm reading my post, I hope it’ll help you understand us better 😛 let’s get started! Continue reading →

If you’ve been following me for a while, you must have noticed that almost all the books I review here are YA. That’s right, I’m a huge YA reader and proud of it. I don’t care about the fact that ignorant people are calling YA “not a real literature” or how some of my friends keep saying that I should start reading “grown up books” now that I am an adult. YA is a legit category and I love it.

However, I feel like my preference has started to change for these past few months. I started to get tired of immature female protagonists, unnecessary girl fights, and how almost all the characters always have noble intention (i.e. saving the world for the sake of saving the world). And as much as I love reading about the characters living their high school lives, I felt like their problems are no longer relevant to me. At the age of 22, my biggest problem isn’t that cute high school boy or that mean girl from my chemistry class. Continue reading →

Today we’ll be talking about something that’s been on my mind for quite a while : girls representation in books. Now you may be wondering what I’m talking about because don’t we get so many representation already? Well, we do. After all, most book covers are photos of girls. But are they positive? Well, we’ll see in a bit 😛 what pushed me to actually write this post was seeing some of my twitter friends talked about the same thing. It made me realize that my opinion was valid and not just my own… you know, that other people share the same opinion with me.

But before we talk about WHY we need more positive portrayal, let me talk about the negative portrayal first.Continue reading →

At the beginning of the year like this, you must have found a lot of reading challenges and read-a-thon all across the blogosphere. You might also see a lot of posts regarding the bloggers’ TBR for those challenges. I have to say, they’re all super interesting! I want to take part in those challenges & read-a-thon but based on previous experiences, chances are I’m gonna fail. This made think about other reading plans and rules such as making monthly TBR or doing a book buying ban, and their effectiveness.

So today I’m throwing one question for us to answer : do reading plans and rules work for you? Because for me, they generally don’t. Let’s see some of these examples! ♣ Continue reading →